The ANJ imposes an administrative block on Polymarket
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22 Jul 2026 •
Reading time: 3 minutes
The ANJ has just ordered French internet service providers to impose an administrative block on the prediction site Polymarket for promoting an illegal gambling service.
The blocking order, signed on 16 July 2026 by the president of the French National Gaming Authority (ANJ), directly targets Adventure One QSS Inc., the operator of the decentralised betting platform Polymarket. The French regulator had been monitoring the site’s activities since November 2024.
An initial formal notice had forced the operator to implement a financial geoblocking mechanism within France, but in practice the floodgates remained open due to a range of circumvention techniques.
The platform’s audience has skyrocketed in recent months, reaching 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors in June alone.
The ANJ points out that the dynamic display of real-time odds on the site’s homepage constitutes illegal advertising. In France, promoting an unlicensed gambling site is a criminal offence punishable by a fine of 100,000 euros. The authority has therefore exercised its emergency blocking powers, a measure that had already enabled 1,290 illegal URLs to be taken down during 2025.
Suspicions of cybercrime and lack of KYC checks
Beyond simply not holding a licence, Polymarket faces serious allegations regarding the integrity of its markets. Bettors were able to place bets on weather conditions, but technical analyses revealed that connected weather sensors may have been hacked to skew the betting results. The cybercrime unit of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a judicial investigation on 4 May 2026, entrusting the inquiries to the Anti-Cybercrime Office (OFAC).
The investigation uncovered a complete lack of identity verification (the ‘Know Your Customer’ or KYC process) on both the European and French versions of the platform. This lack of oversight makes it impossible to verify users’ integrity and exposes punters to major risks of fraud, money laundering and gambling addiction, without any institutional safety net.
Belgium looks in the mirror: the illusion of blocking and the rise of VPNs
The situation in France is reminiscent of that in Belgium, where Polymarket has been officially banned since 30 January 2025 by the Gaming Commission (GC) for failing to hold the required regulatory licences. According to data shared by Magali Clavie, chair of the GC, the restrictions have borne fruit, causing Belgian traffic to fall from 230,000 monthly visits to around 70,000 visits today.
However, these remaining 70,000 visits highlight the limitations of blacklists. Belgian players use VPNs on a daily basis to mask their real IP addresses and circumvent the blocking measures put in place by internet service providers. Added to this is the constant emergence of mirror sites (new domain names) and the lack of systematic blocking of banking transactions by financial institutions, which allows cryptocurrency transactions to flow freely to servers hosted outside the European Union.
The problem is not limited to prediction markets. The GC estimates that unauthorised online casino and sports betting platforms still account for 60 per cent of the total traffic from Belgian players.